This is evident at the final edge of the passage with the exchange between Paul and Sethe, "'They used cowhide on you?' 'And they took my milk.' 'They beat you and you was pregnant?' 'And they took my milk!'" (20 Morrison). Morrison shows how much more focus Sethe puts on that milk to demonstrate how much more scarring that act was than the whipping or beating. She was not only treated as inhuman, as if it was her duty to give the boys her milk, but was then punished for speaking out against it. Looking back today, it is hard to see how this sort of thing could have been allowed to happen, let alone understand why she would be punished further after the event.
To see another experience which is wholly disturbing the reader can turn to Paul D.'s experience of degradation on the Garner farm. In telling Sethe about his time after her departure from Sweet Home, Paul reveals that he was forced to wear a bit, a metal bar used to forcefully keep the mouth open, and had his hands tied behind him. The reader learns from Sethe's description that the experience is one of the most demeaning situations possible for a slave. Their lips are forced violently back, and the tongue is forced deep back in the mouth. It dries out the mouth, while not allowing the slave to produce spit. He goes on to explain that the situation did not just destroy his mouth but also his pride and self-image. His master degraded him to a point of loss of identity, as Morrison shows, "But wasn't no way I'd ever be Paul D again, living or dead. Schoolteacher changed me. I was something else and that something else was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub." (86 Morrison). He was forced into such a low and demeaning point that he seemed to be lesser than a rooster that he helped to hatch. The reader is told that this experience is almost impossible to recover from, leaving most victims with a "wildness in the eye".
